Groaning, Richard complied. He might’ve been smart, top of his class and handsome, but he was still naïve in a way. I felt bad that I was leading him to the horror that lived with me every day. He, of all people, was the one I chose for my first. My best friend of all my years.
I didn’t know why I had felt nothing at that moment. Even when I saw the terror rip through him as the creature seized him, taking in his fine cultured looks and sucking his soul away. She had enjoyed it to the max−relished it with pleasure that swam along her cracked, stony face as my friend faded. I was so numb, I wouldn’t let myself feel it. I had nothing to feel any more from that day forth. I was tranquilized into a submissive state that was only interrupted by the bliss of the lack of pain in my head as she reached out to graze my cheek again.
Taking the anguish with her was my payment. It was all, after twelve days of unbearable misery and dread, it was all I had. To be pain free and dead inside.
~Of Love and Dust~
“WHAT DAY IS it?”
The nurse pushed the brakes on my wheelchair out in the Rotunda in the middle of the courtyard of St Augustine’s Home for the Beloved. The nurse straightened and tucked a blanket around my legs and made sure the one across my shoulders was secure.
“Why Alan, it’s September 12th. You know that. You have it circled on your calendar in bright red.” She smiled and pushed a strand of my scraggly white hair that needed a cut badly behind my ear. “Honestly I don’t know why you insist coming out here in this cold weather. I really could get in trouble if you get sick.” She sighed as she plopped down on the cement, ornate bench. She rubbed her neck, a migraine surely building under her soft brown eyes.
My fingers rubbed incessantly on the blanket, I hated this. I hated the endless wait. Usually at dusk the thing came. I’d had a soul each year. It’d been easier when I was free to move around. But here, here it was not such a simple task to wrangle a good soul to sit with me as the sun set and be taken instead of me. Here, institutionalized now for five years, it’d been a struggle.
Luckily, no one had put two and two together in these past five years. Each year, on the same date, a person would die or go missing. Luckily, there were some old folks here near the brink of death anyway that I was able to finagle into hanging out at dusk with me in the rotunda.She would come, give me a nasty look as she took these souls. She had to. It was part of the deal. They were old and stale she said, but she could not deny that they were good and untainted. She would suck their life force, their essence and give me a disgusted face. They will do, but get me a better soul next time or else… was all she’d say before leaping away into the sky. Her stone wings lifting her body in a scrape of rock and masonry.
Those had been my friends for at least a few months. I had spoken with them, spent endless hours playing chess and enjoyed the afternoon sun. Yet, I’d given them to her. I gave them all away, just like that.
I wasn’t a good soul.
I could see that now.
I wouldn’t be giving her another soul this day, or ever again. I was done with that. My wife was visiting today. I specifically asked her to come on this day of all days. She was still moving about, healthy as an ox. She was fifteen years younger than me so I could see why she had so much energy. But today, her blissful healing energy would be gone forever. I had to give her to the gargoyle and end it. I had to end it now.
“Miss Nancy, would you get me some water? I’m quite thirsty.” I saw my wife exiting the building and walking towards us, waving happily. I didn’t want Nancy to be here, she was too young to die. She was still needed in this world. Knowing it would be at least ten minutes before she made it to the cafeteria and back with a bottle of water, I sent her away.
“Hello dear! Gosh it’s quite chilly out here! Why are you out here? You’ll catch your death sitting in this weather. How about I take you inside? We can play checkers? I brought you some soup.” Rachel bent down to kiss the top of my head. A whiff of gardenia perfume filled my nose as she held out a thermos, filled with my favorite soup. Her long coat covered her svelte body and she wore wool lined boots on her little feet. She was beautiful, even with the streaks of grey running through her light brown hair. Her grey eyes twinkled at me, her skin smooth for a mature woman. No crow’s feet clinging to her eyes.
“No, I’m fine out here, hun.” I took her hand as she sat on the bench Nancy had vacated, placing her purse and the thermos next to her. I had told her I would like her to divorce me and find another, but she wouldn’t. She said I was her only love. She needed only me.
I wish I could say the same. I loved her, but my past had a way of cutting this love down. I had to push her away, had to hold her at arm’s length. To love her was to die. To not love her, was to wither. I had no choice either way. I still didn’t.
“What’s wrong dear? You look worried.” She wrinkled her nose, her eyes filled with knowledge. “It’s September 12th isn’t it? I don’t know what it is about this day but you always did lose your sanity on this day. One day, you will tell me why, no?” She rubbed my hands, hers were warm and savory. Mine−old, cool and frail.
“Yes, I promised I would tell you one day. Today I will.” My voice was solemn, icy cold and bland. I’d thought about this day for eons. I had gone over it in my mind so many times that I knew what to say and what she would say. I knew it. Yet, the words didn’t flow out as easily as they had in my head. Never that easy.
As I choked them out, I told her everything. That day in the alley, the gargoyle, the robber and the loss of his tainted soul. The deal, the years and years of people, my friends which I had handed to her. The good, untainted souls I’d so easily sacrificed instead of myself. Instead of her.
As I finished, I watched her face, calm and serious. I wanted to know what hovered in her brain, what her thoughts were and if she hated me. Her grey eyes were darker in the dusk than the midday sun, they didn’t twinkle or sparkle like usual. In fact, they were stormy and full of things unsaid. I wanted to drain the storm, make it wither away and pull her light back into them. I hoped I would see her light up again. At least before she came.
“How could you do that?” Rachel finally spoke. She didn’t look at me, but her anger steamed about her face like a mask, morphing before my own eyes.
“I had to. I told you, I had to or I would die.”
“So, why didn’t you?” She looked up at me, the grey in her eyes swirling with the storm clouds above. Tears filling them, threatening to pour.
“I–I, what? What do you mean, why didn’t I? I would have died, or worse, I would have to give her you! I couldn’t have donethat.” I swallowed. My throat dry as deserts without rain, rough and sticky.
“All those people, Alan. You gave them to her? How could you?” She stood up. Her face now twisted with pain and hate. I looked down to the ground rather than to face her like that.
“Rachel I…”
“No. You’re not worthy of me.” She turned and stopped. She was huffing now and the storm clouds above broke their hold on the gallons of thick, heavy rain. It poured down, pounding and stinging my face, drenching my clothes and blankets.
“I know I’m not. I’m sorry Rachel. I know I’m not worthy of anything,” I sighed, rubbing the now intense pain that stabbed behind my eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
She whirled around and I lost my breath. My chest tightened and I couldn’t breathe.
“Rachel?”
“I told you to never say such things. I told you to bring me your true love.”
My eyes bulged as she drew my breath from my body. I stared horrified at my love, my one and only. Rachel’s angelic face was gone, in her place was the gargoyle woman’s face, grey and cracked in her eternal stone.
What?
“I did bring you my true love…Rachel…” my voice faded. My breath was almost gone. My heart beat in my chest erratically. It was the end soon, this I knew well.
“You fool. Your true love is yourself. You were never capa
ble of loving another. You never could. You dare bring me Rachel? Ha!” Her laugh rang in my head as I gripped my temples, the pain intensifying. Her face looking slightly hurt. “I am Rachel. But, not your true love.”
“What?” my lips mouthed the word, unable to form the sound.
“Yes, it was you all this time. You alone could have stopped this. You loved yourself above others. I should take your soul for pay. But…”
Suddenly I could breath, easier and easier. My heart resumed a natural beat and my chest ceased to burn. I gulped down the precious air as she let go of whatever supernatural hold she’d had on me. She bent over, now looking like Rachel once more. Her smile wasn’t so innocent. It was malicious and full of evil intentions.
“I have a better idea,” she laughed straightening up. She reached out to touch my cheek, taking all the pain in my head away and much more with it.
“I curse you with everlasting life, so that you can bring me souls year after year after year, over and over again. Young forever to live, but never to really be alive,” she snarled, turning and walking away. This time as she rounded the corner, she morphed into the gargoyle form and flew up into the black grey of the clouds.
I stared down at my hands. The wrinkles of time and the taint of age were all gone. Flexing my fingers, the pain of arthritis and wear were also absent. I was young again.
No.
I stood up, a strong muscular body under my hospital gown and pajama pants let me know what she had done.
No.
This was not what I had wanted.Never this.I was young again. I had to relive my lifeagain. If I’d given her what she had wanted that first day, I wouldn’t be here. I would not have to live forever as the reaper I had become. I was an old man, stuck in a young body, but filled with regret and shame. Doomed.
Yet now, I had no wife, no lover. Even if she’d been Rachel the entire time, I would miss her in a way. I would miss her chicken soup and her sweet caress on my pains. I would miss her smile and her laughter, her everlasting calm. Yet, she wasn’t who I had thought. She’d been that monster all along. She had played her part so well, every day, fooling me in every way. My skin crawled at the thought.
No!
I ran from the rotunda as I saw Nurse Nancy struggling to pop open an umbrella at the door to the building. I ran and ran, through the mud and rain, like that fateful day, long ago.
The End
Dedication and Acknowledgement
I have to thank and dedicate this to my writing brothers and sisters, who without them, the spark inside would die. They are like coals burning, keeping each other bright in the dead of night, warm and true. I am blessed to have you in my life.
About the Author
Alexia currently lives in Las Vegas, Nevada–Sin City! She loves to spend every free moment writing or playing with her four rambunctious kids. Writing has always been her dream and she has been writing ever since she can remember. She loves writing paranormal fantasy and poetry and devours books daily. Alexia also enjoys watching movies, dancing, singing loudly in the car and Italian food.
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